


Awake there dreaming

by Budinca



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A Bit of Internalised Aphobia, Asexual Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Character Study, First Kiss, Getting Together, Grey-romantic Martin, M/M, Relationship Discussions, Scottish Highlands, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23817961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Budinca/pseuds/Budinca
Summary: Martin had held several iterations of his own feelings in his head for the better part of three years.Martin was in love. Martin had a crush. Martin had a weird complex that made him want to make everyone like him, even just a little bit. Martin had tricked himself into believing he liked someone. Martin liked the idea of being in love, and had chosen the least likely person to care about it.On looking from afar, and seeing up close. Several musings and discussions on the way to and around Scotland.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 105
Kudos: 344
Collections: Aspec Martin Blackwood Week





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Salt and the Sea - Gregory Alan Isakov](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nz1mVRhPNk).  
> I did not plan this, but I blinked and realised I had 4 pages of monologues one morning, so I thought I might as well.  
> Generally all characters I write fall somewhere on the aro/ace spectrums because, really, what _is_ attraction? But this is a bit more on the nose (although not a lot, since I still need to be vague or else I die).  
> Divided in 2 chapters because otherwise there was no way I would actually be done for aspec week.

It's funny, but in a way it was easier before. 

Easier than this — scrubbing dishes and glasses and that one pot Daisy or some previous owner had left in the shed completely encrusted in who-knew-what, doing laundry and fighting with the clothesline outside, talking over meals every day, actually following radio shows, since that was all they had. 

Easier when Jon had barely been there, either distant or missing or simply out of reach. Easier when Martin had felt like he himself hadn’t been there enough to matter.

It was just easier to deal with feelings on your own. Martin could casually muse over them as he made tea, then coffee. He could get bored waiting for some government website to load, and ponder them a bit longer. Almost like thinking back on a mystery novel he hadn't yet reached the end of. Not puzzling, not as such, but a puzzle anyhow. Where the pieces kept changing shape — just a little, never enough to become unrecognisable — and yet still fit in the general picture.

Martin had held several iterations of his own feelings in his head for the better part of three years.

Martin was in love. Martin had a crush. Martin had a weird complex that made him want to make everyone like him, even just a little bit. Martin had tricked himself into believing he liked someone. Martin liked the idea of being in love, and had chosen the least likely person to care about it.

All could be true. All could be false. He pondered over them as the water boiled, as screens loaded, as he stapled page after page after page. _Is everything a game to you?_ That was the variety show buzzer of his own mind whenever he came upon something that sounded especially eloquent, and took momentary pride over it. 

_Is everything a game to you?_ His mother's voice, every time he'd tried to explain something to her when he was younger, instead of saying it out right. Clinically, not eloquently. 

He couldn't help feeling, at the back of his mind, that pressing weight. The one that told him that if he really felt anything as strong as he claimed to be feeling, he wouldn't have fun with it. Wouldn't treat it as a mystery novel, the method never quite revealed. Wouldn’t go back and forth between love and habit.

That maybe he wasn't in love at all, couldn't _be_ in love, was too _childish_ for it. That he'd never been in love at all. That he'd just happened to get the idea at some point and he'd been bored and lonely enough to cling to it. 

Funny. How that changed last year solely because he couldn't find the energy to care anymore. Perhaps he should have taken hold of the corner that said he'd never been in love, rather than the one which told him he knew he was. He'd counted his losses over that already. 

_I really loved you, you know?_ That had been true. When Martin thought he was worse than dead, and almost glad for it. Doubts and hesitations and uncertainties set aside, his mother's voice blown away like ash off a mantelpiece, that had been true. 

He'd forgotten, for a while, all those iterations. No reason to remember them when his mind could be so blessedly blank while making tea, making coffee, loading websites.

It came back to him a bit on the train. When Jon had slipped back into the compartment, two styrofoam cups balanced in one hand, and two packets of sandwiches in the other, and offered one of each to Martin. He'd never mentioned he'd go for any, just said he needed some air, they had been there for four hours already. And Martin thought, _It would be nice if he remembered how I like my tea._

Then he took a sip, scalded his tongue, and nevertheless realised that Jon did.

_the 27th of September_

Jon somehow managed to sink even in the old and musty seats of the train.

“I haven’t taken this route since…” he let out a long breath, looking at the rapidly shifting hills outside the grimy window. “...since my last Fringe, so ten years or something like that.”

He set the tea and food on the empty seat beside him and his hands gathered the strands of hair on each side of his face and pulled them back, tying them in a small bun. When he caught Martin’s eye, he smiled.

Martin had forgotten what people looking at you felt like. “Do you think we’ll have to hitchhike the rest of the way?”

“God, I hope not,” Jon almost laughed. “Can you imagine? With our luck, we’ll end up like Bernadette Delcour. Rural Scotland, only all the cattle had turned to stone.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Hills in technicolour…”

“Jon.”

“Trains faster than a moped.”

“ _Jon_.”

Jon grinned. “We’ll get there.”

Martin huffed into his tea, then swiftly pushed his glasses into his hair when they started fogging up. 

“Yeah.” He took a sip and glanced at the blurry hills outside. “Oh.”

“Hm?”

“I read that one.”

Jon let out a sigh that might have been contented, had it not been Jon’s. He picked up his tea. “You did.”

It used to be all iterations. 

_I hope he sleeps enough, I hope he eats enough, I hope he remembers to check his glasses prescription often enough._

Jon hadn't been the first person Martin had liked, but he'd been the first one in many years with which he'd had to stay in such close quarters. For a while, at least. Save for a few crushes back in school, the ones that came after had been fleeting things, here and out again. 

Perhaps that’s why it had to be Jon. He was and wasn’t there at the same time. Close enough to care for, distant enough for it not to feel too overwhelming. ( _This was another iteration_.)

Easy, see?

 _Are you this jumpy when someone tries to kiss you too?_ someone had asked Martin at some point. Tim, probably. Probably after a Friday night out when he’d accidentally mixed his drink up with Sasha’s, since Tim wouldn’t have probed that deeply otherwise.

And Martin had to admit, he was.

Nerves, nerves, nerves, before a first date, a second, when they first called him with no incentive, that bone-sludge feeling when a date was drawing to an end and _huh, was this park this empty before_ , and the 20 m to the gate where he knew a kiss would come. 

Martin liked those moments. They made him feel vividly alive, when all the rest of his day was iterations and worries and the beginning of a dissociative behaviour he'd been meaning to deal with for years, but never got to. 

Easy. He could try to put his feelings in words in his own head at his leisure, although he sometimes forgot to rein himself in and they got a bit away from him. Made him care a bit more than he should have, made him hurt more than he needed, when the break came.

Oftentimes he wished he could switch his brain just right, so that all his thoughts and emotions came solely in response to what he was offered. Fondness born out of what someone did for him, unlike out of what they _might_ someday do. Crushes that bloomed into something more from reciprocation, not from hours spent alone, daydreaming.

But unlike his poetic tendencies, Martin was slow to catch affection, and fast to lose it. If he didn’t make an effort, he lost interest quickly enough, no matter how much he liked being in love.

_the 29nd of September_

Martin dragged himself out of bed in the morning of their second day in Daisy’s safehouse with the hazy head of someone who’d slept for the past twenty-three hours, and found Jon looking out the window with a steaming mug in his hands.

 _Yeah, that would be nice_ , Martin thought, rubbing at his face. Then a splinter dug a bit into his socked foot, and he bent down to pick it out — and realised that they really _were_ here. This _was_ happening.

“World’s still here,” Jon said, adding another relevant fact to Martin’s revelation.

Martin straightened up, took in the morning sight: faint sunlight, dusty floorboards, cracked walls, Jon, still wearing that old cardigan, his hair tied even more haphazardly. Martin’s heart was a towel, twisted round to bleed.

“Were you awake long?”

“No,” Jon said, and glanced back out the window. “Haven’t slept this much in years.”

“Maybe it’s the distance too?”

Jon hummed into the edge of his mug. “Maybe.”

“What are you looking at?”

“Come here.”

Theoretically, a logical request. If Martin wanted to see, he ought to actually go there and see. Still, it made him falter for a moment. The shift from musings to approach. The _Ah, yes, I am aware of your physical presence in this dusty room with me_ bit. Perhaps Martin was not as awake or aware as he’d thought.

His feet carried him there anyway. Close to Jon’s side, he shot a dubious look at his overbrewed tea, then peered out the window.

“What’s that, sheep?”

“Saw some cattle earlier too. Look a bit closer though.”

Martin did. Squinted. He hoped his glasses were not overdue.

“Is that… is that goat chewing on our fence?”

“Has been for the past forty-two minutes.”

Martin glanced at him again. “Are we… gonna do something about it?”

“Any suggestions?”

“No,” he had to admit. “Is that _healthy_?”

Jon shrugged.

“Right,” Martin sighed. 

He wasn’t in the mood to be chased around by feral goats. Although — when he looked at the state of the room around them, vision unaddled by panic or exhaustion, he almost felt like taking his chances. They’d have to do a lot of dusting, for one.

“I’m gonna see if there are any cleaning supplies left around from this century,” he said.

Jon hummed, remaining by the window. “Do you want any breakfast?”

Martin turned back round to frown in confusion.

“Those jaffa cakes from Edinburgh and tea,” Jon explained.

That made more sense. 

Martin nodded. “Yes, thank you.” He made to go again, but he stopped to frown a bit at the empty kitchen counter, the bare cabinets. “Where’d you find the _tea_?”

At which point Jon, visibly struggling to hold back a smile, set his cup down. Dug his hands into his cardigan’s pockets, and pulled out what looked like a dozen railway complimentary tea packets. Which, since they’d travelled second class, shouldn’t have been all that complimentary, in fact.

Laughter spilled out of Martin like sea foam.


	2. Chapter 2

Iterations:

On passing an old-looking cafe draped in ivy. _That's a nice place, I wonder if Jon would like to have lunch there sometime._

On looking up from his desk one December morning. _His jumper's ragged, it would be nice if we ever got close enough so that I could buy him a new one._

On finding a strange display in the National Gallery on his way back from bank. _I wonder what Jon would think._

On rearranging the bookshelves in the living room. _I wonder if he buys books for the people he likes. What book would he get me? No, too much._

On making dinner for himself one Saturday evening. _Maybe this whole crush thing will go away one day, and we could be friends._

On walking to the tube station. _Maybe I_ do _only like him as a friend, that can happen._

On opening the door to the Archives. _Maybe he's just the closest person I felt the need to please._

On getting ready for bed. _Maybe I just got stuck on this. That wouldn't be fair to him, no matter what he thinks of me._

 _Maybe I just_ think _I should still care. Do I?_

Useless, all true and untrue at once. Except for one. 

_I really loved you, you know?_

There was no time now for Martin to make his iterations and musings at his heart’s leisure. Now, his life had been put in negative colours, everything the opposite of what it had been before. He was there, there, there all the time, talking, laughing, crying, washing dishes, coming down from panic attacks, working Jon through his, cooking, messily planting daisies underneath the windows at Jon’s request.

The moments he got to slip back into his more pensive states were few and far between, and, for now, he did not begrudge it. Not after last year. Not yet.

Still. Sometimes (often), Martin felt like he was simmering and overflowing on the inside. But not in anger, just in — warmth? nerves? That thing that made his knees go weak when a classmate had leaned into him somewhere in Regent’s Park, or when a guy had taken his hand so gently in the Natural History Museum, years and years before.

Negative colours. There, there, there. He came back to himself more and more each passing day.

_the 4th of October_

“Do you think she's actually read this?”

Martin held up a Nicholas Sparks book that had been wedged between others on the bottom of a corner shelf in the living/kitchen/front room. He heard Jon pad closer.

“You ask about that, but not about the cookbooks?”

“Oh, it’s, well, you know,” Martin waved a hand, set the book on the coffee/dining table. “Those have a tendency to just… sprout in a house once it’s been there long enough.”

“ _Sprout_?” Jon asked.

Martin could hear the smile in his voice, and he was glad he was still kneeling facing the shelf, as he wasn’t quite sure what his face was doing right now.

“Yeah,” he said, hoping his voice was light. He went on checking the other books. “Have you never cleaned your place and found a cookbook you had no memory of ever buying?”

There was a momentary silence, during which Martin wiped the now empty shelf with a damp cloth, before starting to set the books back.

“Come to think of it,” Jon eventually said, thoughtful. “I did find one when I was cleaning Georgie’s apartment, and she’s not the most…” An audible shrug.

“Yep,” Martin nodded. “That’s how it happens.”

“Oh, what’s this?” Jon leaned down and pulled out the book Martin had just set there. “Ah.”

Martin smiled to himself at the succinct disappointment in that one syllable. He pushed himself to his feet and rubbed some feeling back into his thighs, before looking up and seeing Jon leafing through what looked like a cornershop occult magazine.

His scowl was deepening with each page. A few wayward strands of hair curled over his forehead, nose, eyes, cheekbones. Martin felt fond enough to nag.

“What, not riveting enough for you?”

“No,” Jon grimaced some more, turning yet another page.

Martin grinned. “Doesn’t cross-reference to your standards?”

“Shut up, Martin,” Jon said, with a half-hearted glare and a barely concealed smile.

That swiftly devolved into him pulling his shoulders back and holding the magazine like one would an ancient text. Then, with a lofty voice he rarely used nowadays, Jon started reciting a column about a missing tree, which might have been intriguing had it not been about a freshly-bought lemon tree left on the sidewalk for fifteen minutes prior to disappearance. There was a whole paragraph dedicated to what the owner had wished to do with it, their garden design downright scientific in manner.

"The Flesh, clearly," Martin said. 

"What?" Jon blinked. 

"The Flesh," Martin repeated, keeping his face serious. "What, you think only animals are afraid of being eaten? It's the 21st century, Jon, come on. That tree knew what it had coming for its lemons, and switched to avatarhood to escape it. Now rural…?" 

"Norwich." 

"Rural Norwich has a manic, feral lemon tree on the loose."

"When will people stop."

"Exactly." 

They looked at each other for a while. Then Martin was a bit disappointed to feel the grin already breaking on his own face. Jon's was fast to follow, though. He dissolved into laughter and took Martin with him. 

There it was again. Nerves, nerves, nerves, his body incandescent. He felt more alive than he had in years. 

“You know, I caused some sort of local urban legend when I was younger,” Martin said casually, after they were done coming up with more and more ridiculous explanations for the disappearance.

Jon stared at him, magazine forgotten in his hands. “I beg your pardon?”

“Yeah, it was, well…” The continuous attention was a bit more overwhelming than Martin had expected, really. He looked away, sheepish, and sheepishly rubbed the back of neck. “So it was back in Devon, and we, our neighbour had this… really sad dog?"

So Martin commenced to tell him about those six months of his life when he was thirteen and he inadvertently made the neighbours believe there was some ghostly dog prowling the streets at night and scaring their chickens (when in fact it was just Martin, half-asleep, letting the quasi-stolen neighbour dog roam free for a few hours).

Jon huffed the smallest laugh, slipping the magazine in an empty place on the shelf beside them. When Martin glanced momentarily his way, he was smiling still, arms crossed and leaning slightly into the bookshelf.

Martin would have told him he had his doubts about the stability of said bookshelf, but Jon looked more relaxed than he had in years, and that alone made it hard for Martin to acknowledge his (very close) presence in any way.

So he pushed on. He was good at that. 

After the inception of the urban myth, there came his many failed attempts to get good-natured tourists to adopt the poor dog, without anyone noticing. Then the gradually more outrageous stories his classmates shared about what eventually evolved in the collective subconscious of the community as a _pack_ of ghostly dogs.

Martin waited to Jon to compose himself before reaching the end.

“Anyway, one day, he just… ran away? Long overdue, in my opinion, but yeah. I’d been away on a school trip for a few days, so when I came back he wasn’t there. I think another neighbour’s son took it back with him to Exeter, I’d seen them together on a few evenings.”

Jon raised his eyebrows at that, smiling still, as if he wanted Martin to _go on_ with this whole senseless tirade. Martin was going to, anyway. His blood was growing warmer and warmer, and he feared that if he stopped talking, all this undivided attention he was currently getting would make him faint.

“So there was that. Not that that made anyone stop _talking_ about it. It was a whole… thing. And I had to sit through it all as everyone made theories, worrying that I’d go to _jail_ , or worse, or… _something_ , I don’t know, for canine theft and mass manipulation. Please stop laughing.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Jon said, rubbing at his face. “Glad to see this whole experience wasn’t traumatic enough to _stop_ you from abducting dogs.”

Martin opened and closed his mouth several times, face burning now. “That was _one_ time!”

“I know, I know.” Jon frowned. “What happened to that one, anyway?”

“I took it to a shelter that same day,” Martin said. “Like I _told_ you I would.”

“Right.” Jon looked abashed enough, at least. “Did you ever tell them what had really happened?”

“Who?”

“The people making up ghost dog stories.”

“Oh.” Martin blinked. “No, no way. I just prayed for them to die down quickly, and then we moved.”

He’d still felt awful about it for years to come. Or, well, until he’d had to spend all his time either working or looking for work, at which point bad experiences came aplenty, and his brain didn’t have to go digging years in the past for them. Still. It hadn’t been that bad. 

“Any more wild conspiracies I should know about?” Jon asked.

Martin couldn’t help staring at him. There was that lilt to his voice, that relaxed set of his shoulders, that said — he really did want to hear it, if Martin had any more things to share. He was prompting him to keep talking. 

Martin suddenly felt a bit short of breath. He had little hope it was not showing, and even less when a shade of worry crept over Jon’s face.

“What is it?” Jon asked.

And Martin felt the fizzling in his fingers. Perhaps he should have broken eye contact, but it was too late now. 

“It’s just…” he tried. “You’re… giving me _a lot_ of attention right now.”

He could keep neither the breathlessness, nor the laughter out of his voice. He waited for Jon to point out it was literally just the two of them in there, so, disregarding the fence-gnawing goat that sometimes still came around for a snack, their options were limited.

But he didn’t. What Jon asked instead was, “Do you want me to give you more space?”

His face was serious, the amusement from before nowhere to be seen.

Martin started shaking his head before he even found his words. “No, it’s just…”

 _We’ve barely had conversations longer than half an hour before all this, and now we’ve been here for a week_. He’d been used to gathering their interactions like grains of gold, storing them in a small locker in his heart. He hadn’t been prepared to ever overflow with them.

“I’m getting used to it,” he said, letting out a small laugh. “Acclimatising, I guess… Please don’t stop.”

He’d grabbed Jon’s hand at some point. _When did that happen?_ It didn’t really matter, because now Jon briefly squeezed back.

His gaze was down-turned, same as his mouth, and it didn’t take all that much brainpower to guess what he was thinking. Years of working, only a wall apart, with allegedly fewer things out to kill them, and it was now that they’d actually found each other.

So, characteristically, what eventually came out of Jon’s mouth was, “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s—” Martin sighed. “I know you, Jon. You’re not exactly the most attentive person. Don’t frown, you know what I mean. You get focused on one thing at a time, and little else. By that criterion, we’ve managed to interact quite a lot, all things considered.”

“Nevertheless...”

“And I’m not used to getting a lot of attention either. Don’t exactly go around seeking it. I didn’t construct all my social behaviour around you, you know. Get a load of yourself!”

Jon burst out laughing. “Very well, I’ll try.”

“Good.”

His hand was lovely in Martin’s. Fingertips cold, but growing warmer, skin a bit dry, but still almost soft, despite everything. Martin loved the weight of it in his own, grounding, simple, there.

“Sorry there are not enough people around to quite build an urban legend here,” Martin said, then frowned. “Rural? Rural legend. We could have employed the goat, posed as journalists, got us access to that cattle farm we saw a while back. Pet their cows as research.”

Jon’s other hand cupped his cheek, and Martin sighed and stuttered to a stop. Jon’s thumb brushed the skin under his eye, and Martin couldn’t help closing his eyes for a brief moment.

“Always with an eye out for defying the law,” Jon said. He sounded fond.

“You got me,” Martin grinned, feeling shaky down to his bones. “All… defiance and crimes and eyes out…”

The last finally made Jon chuckle. He let go of Martin’s hand and cradled the back of his neck instead. “No, I don’t think so.”

Martin was making valiant efforts to hold eye contact instead of letting his gaze drift downwards, but it was getting harder by the moment. Jon's touch was feather-light, thumbs tracing Martin’s jaw. 

And Jon was looking at him. His eyes had always been so dark, almost black. It was why it had hurt to see a tinge of green permeating them, since he came back from the hospital. It was there still, but so faint. 

Martin's hands had found his waist, his back, resting there ever so gently. He longed to press them between his shoulder blades and _cling_ , but didn’t dare. Not yet.

Jon was looking at him. Martin was looking back. Heart and lungs and nervous system in his throat. He wished Jon's touch was not so light, but knew he would have melted right off his feet if it weren't. Then Martin watched as Jon lowered his gaze the slightest bit, and breathed out when he felt his thumb graze the corner of his mouth.

Jon’s eyes returned to his. “Can I…?”

Martin hadn't kissed anyone in five or six years. Martin hadn’t been kissed in five or six years. Martin would have been fine not doing that for another seven, eight, eleven. That was not what was important. That was not what he’d longed for. 

(For why make things harder?) He'd always chosen his feelings carefully, so they never needed any reciprocation or reaction from someone else.

 _Can I_ , Jon had asked. 

“Please,” Martin whispered.

Jon leaned into him, and his lips found Martin’s almost gently. Martin had forgotten how warm mouths were supposed to be. He kissed Jon back, let his hands drift a bit higher up his back, and was helpless to hold back a sigh when, with a single movement, they fit just right.

Then there came a shared breath, their lips barely grazing, and then Jon leaned back in, more purposeful than before, and Martin’s thoughts fizzled out like birthday candles. 

To say he hadn't expected Jon to kiss so intently would have meant nothing, for Martin hadn't really imagined kissing Jon at all. (Well, he might have, very, _very_ briefly, when Melanie first told them about Georgie. But otherwise, no. Not until this year. Not until he’d burst in Martin's office, begging him to run away. Not until that lonely shore disappeared behind them. Not again until now. )

The brief impression of Jon’s lip against his tongue made him lightheaded. The reverse made Martin cling to him at last. Martin had never felt so overcome by nerves and so safe before.

The feeling didn’t dim as they broke apart. If anything, it spread, for there they were, the dewy Scottish sunlight spilling on both of them. Dust floating in the air, small cottage still in disarray, Jon’s hair as messy as before.

Jon's smile, soft and fond and so close now. His eyes were almost dark. Martin loved him so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abusing ellipses, but for a good cause.  
> 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this time I really am done.  
> P. S. Aran sweaters are, indeed, pretty cool.

Martin used the twenty minutes it took him to make breakfast porridge trying to remember when he’d last dated someone. It _might_ have been during his first year at the institute, but then again, it might have been at one of his previous jobs too. The existential fear was the same, after all. At least, it used to be, back then.

He tried to remember why they’d broken up. It always escaped him. As afraid as he used to be of the idea of breaking up a relationship, the break-ups themselves had never really left a mark for too long. Perhaps that was a bad sign. _But_ Martin took his blessings where he could get them, so he wasn’t going to probe too much at the fact that something _didn’t_ make him break down.

First year at the institute, then. The guy’s name — Mark or Matt or Mac, Martin only recalled the first letter, because he remembered the alliteration made people think they were related. He’d been working at some indistinct multinational, born and raised in London and showing it, and Martin remembered being bought many coffees around that time, despite his saying that he didn’t really care for it.

They couldn’t have been dating long, maybe autumn and a bit of summer, if even that, because Martin remembered being left with an extra Christmas present at home that year and having no idea what to do with a whole bottle of whiskey and a fancy glass. Really, he was a bit ashamed at not recalling more details about the whole thing, it had been a relatively steady relationship for a few months, after all, but he guessed four years of trauma did that to you.

Or maybe it had been _that_ , as usual. Maybe Martin had liked that whole affair better from the solitude of his own room/desk/bed than face to face. His affection flowed more freely from a distance, with no off-hand comments or condescending glances to divert it. It always troubled him, how much less of it he usually felt in person.

It wasn’t that he had ridiculously high standards. It wasn’t that. He hoped not. That would have been ridiculous, he just wanted — well, he didn’t know, did he? If his heart had been able to follow a chart of desirable character traits, he wouldn’t have fallen for Jon.

Or maybe he would have anyway. Yeah, he probably would have.

_The 8th of October_

An old man in the village had been knitting aran jumpers. Martin had seen them hanging behind a window when he’d gone for groceries, and somehow mustered enough of his old self to actually go and inquire about them. He ended up paying him double than what he asked, and gone home a couple pounds of wool richer.

Thus dressed in off-white wool, Jon looked like a school librarian. Or like a kindergarten teacher. Martin didn’t know which one he found more appealing. They’d started roaming the hillpaths after breakfast, and currently Jon was looking at his sleeves and explaining to Martin what each pattern signified.

“And this one is for fishing. I guess I can see it…”

“Wouldn’t have pegged you as a fan.”

Jon blinked. “Oh, no, I’m learning this as I’m saying it.”

“Huh.”

His mild enthusiasm faded. “Probably not a good idea.”

“I think it’s a fairly harmless way to abuse evil wikipedia, considering,” Martin said, and didn’t miss Jon rolling his eyes and muttering _wikipedia_ under his breath. He counted a dozen steps before he grew tired of his own tentative glances. “What about this one?”

“Oh, that one’s called Irish moss, and it stands for—”

And so the sparkle came back into his eyes, and this time it wasn’t even the creepy, greenish one. Just his typical Jon-ness. Martin took a breath of clean air, and let the myriad facts wash over him like a lullaby.

There were still moments when thoughts or simple physical pain got too much and they both grew snappish, for no more than a few hours at a time, before making more tea and talking it through instead. There were things they were yet not ready to mention, to ponder over — everything waiting and not waiting for them back in London, what had come and what was to come.

Yet, for once, Martin was less and less inclined to mull over everything for hours at a time.

He’d been only half-sure when he’d said it, so it came as a surprise when Martin realised he was acclimatising to the whole — everything. This unforeseen turn his life had taken. He would’ve almost called the entire thing idyllic, had the heating worked better and had they not been reduced to stringing buckets around the cottage every time it rained.

Martin somehow like it better like this. It felt real.

Some had called Jon indifferent before, distant, because he forgot birthdays, and hardly ever asked personal questions, and hated office parties with a vengeance. Martin had had his doubts, but it was now that he could see proof after proof — that Jon paid attention. Jon cared deeply. It was just that he could only split himself in so many directions at a time.

With everyone back in London, Daisy a closed subject, and the institute a much-avoided one, there weren’t that many things he could focus his attention on. Just loose shingles, absurd butter prices, wandering cattle, and Martin.

It was as if he was trying to fill the empty spaces (contents not so much gone, as hastily swept under the rug for now) by memorising even the most ridiculous details of what Martin told him. Childhood dreams, recipes, abandoned interests, weird relatives. His attention had that kind of intensity that Martin had liked to read about in books but always felt uncomfortable if even an inkling of it was directed his way.

But Martin was getting used to it, to his own surprise. Caring, it seemed, when it was this vocal and this casual in its self-evidence, was easier to bear than all those attempts where the effort to conform to a scenario had been greater than the emotion behind it. Perhaps he’d been doing it wrong. Perhaps there was no one way to do it right.

And perhaps it had been easier before, but it was also getting easier now. So maybe it was less about feeling like forest fires bloomed inside your chest every moment of the day, and more about wanting to talk, instead of wanting to hide.

_the 12th of October_

“So, yeah…”

Even in the middle of the night, the moonlight managed to light most of their small bedroom, showcasing each and every of the wide array of frowns and grimaces Jon’s face had been going through for the fast half-hour. Martin found it a bit funny and a bit fond that Jon would finish a personal declaration like a pupil would an oral presentation, but he chose not to mention it.

He squeezed Jon’s hand instead. “Alright.”

“Alright,” Jon echoed, sagging a bit in relief.

Or, perhaps, not in relief. For a moment later, he was staring at Martin expectantly. Martin wasn't sure what else he was expected to say. He squeezed Jon’s hand again, but that didn’t seem to have the desired eloquence, for Jon huffed, and took a deep breath.

"So? Are you… do you have any questions? Are you disappointed, or confused, or…?" 

It was Martin's turn to stare.

"About what?" 

Not the right question, apparently, judging from the prolonged sigh from Jon. 

"Martin, I just told you I'm not particularly interested in sex." 

"I know," Martin said. "I was here." Pinned under Jon's hand over his own, and two ragged blankets, at that.

Jon made a rather complicated sound in his throat, somewhere between impatience and anxiety. “So?” His stares were still rather intimidating, even when nearly cuddling in the cottage’s rickety bed.

“So,” Martin tried to gather his words better this time. “Alright. Thank you for telling me. That’s not a problem, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Jon repeated.

It took another pregnant pause for Martin to realise he wasn’t agreeing, but waiting for further explanations. Martin downright goggled at him.

“What — you thought it _would_ be a problem? For _me_?”

Another complicated sound, now laced with embarrassment and accompanied by Jon momentarily letting go of his hand to wave it in the air.

“ _Yes_ , for you. Why not? Maybe… maybe not a problem, per se, but something to work over. Meet each other halfway. I told you, I’m not _completely_ opposed—”

The gnawing feeling rising in Martin’s gut finally breached the surface of his current thoughts. 

“You thought I would want to have sex? Badly enough to _debate_ it? _Me_?” Martin was at a loss. Jon was still staring at him like he didn’t make any sense, which Martin found a bit rude. It was _him_ , after all. He said as much. “I, I mean — I’m _me_. You _know_ me.”

“I, I,” Jon stammered. That was a bad sign. “I’m afraid I must be missing something, or forgetting, or…”

“Jon,” Martin said.

“Yes?”

“It’s,” Martin faltered. “Christ. Alright, so I assumed you would have assumed… No, wait, I hear how it sounds now. I, um, I… alright. I might have to… sort this out for myself first. I don’t quite know how to say it.”

“You don’t have to,” Jon rushed to say. “If you don’t want to talk about it, then—”

“No, no,” Martin closed his eyes, ran a hand over his face. “I want to, just give me a moment.”

Jon nodded silently, for what else was he to do, Martin thought embarrassedly, as he turned to face the ceiling. Once again, he saw the cracks in the plaster and wondered how much more rain they would be able to endure before it started to fall down on them like limey snow.

A moment passed, then another, then a dozen more, as Martin blinked up at the ceiling and Jon’s hand remained a steadying weight over his. There were crickets outside, so loud. He’d thought they only sang in summer.

He tried to concentrate. It was as unpleasant as he’d been expecting. Overthinking was nowhere near as fun in polite company.

“Huh. I really thought this rather made sense before I really thought about it.”

Jon was running his fingertips gently over his knuckles. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”

“No, I know,” Martin nodded at the ceiling. “I meant, just, to me. Now I’m not so sure.”

He turned his hand, and Jon started tracing the lines of his palm. Martin grasped his fingers for a moment, quick and tight.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You were telling me about yourself, and here I swooped in, made it about me.”

“Martin,” Jon’s voice an edge to it. “It’s alright. We’re not… queuing at the doctor’s. We can just talk.”

“Surprising, knowing us,” Martin almost laughed. Jon squeezed his hand, and he stopped. Breathed in. “Alright. So, I, well, it never really occurs to me that people could simply… assume I’m having sex? No, that sounded weird.So, even as a joke, it just seems so… It’s like when an employer asks you if you’re married and internally you’re like — what, _me_? You… yeah, you probably don’t get that.”

“I do, a bit.”

“Alright. So, basically, that’s me. I kind of assumed I must come with some sort of — tag, a flashing sign that says I… don’t. As evident as the colour of my hair, or the clothes I’m wearing,” he faltered. “And now I don’t know if that’s something to do with _me_ , or with my self esteem, or something else. I mean, I certainly never really looked at someone and thought, _oh, I want to sleep with them_. I don’t think I would mind it overly much if I never, uh, slept with anybody, actually. It just doesn’t seem that important for me. But it still, dunno, weirds me out when people assume it does?”

Jon pressed his face into his shoulder. His cheeks were still warm, embarrassment or the fire they might have overstoked that evening.

“Well, that I certainly get,” Jon said. “It’s unpleasant.”

Martin thought about it for a while, then it clicked. “Like when Tim thought you and Basira…?”

“Oh, God…” Jon groaned, warm breath against Martin’s sleeve.

A shakier grin morphed onto Martin’s face. “Or when Basira thought you and I…?”

Another groan. “Christ.”

Martin laughed.

They lay there in silence for a while, before Jon said quietly, “Thank you for telling me.”

“That’s my line.”

Jon smiled against his shoulder. “Maybe so. We can share.”

Now that the mild adrenaline of going through all that had started to pass, Martin could breathe more easily. He was almost proud of them, of himself. It _had_ been a passable speech. True, if not really eloquent. It was especially nice that he and Jon seemed to be on the same page on this. That hadn’t happened before. 

Martin could leave it like this and they could go on with their lives, however much was left of them. It was already alright. No need to voice quite _every_ thought in his brain. Still.

Still, still, still— 

“Still,” Martin found himself saying, and barely suppressed a wince. “I think I would maybe… like to try? If, if there are no expectations and it’s not just me who doesn’t really feel all that strong an inclination. I think I’d like to try.”

Jon hummed softly against his shoulder, but Martin couldn’t momentarily tell if it was in response to him or to a dream. His hand in Martin’s was loose. Still, Martin went on, for some unclear reason. 

“I, I heard it’s good for stress relief?” he barely kept his voice light. “We’re very stressed.”

Jon laughed, a soft and quiet thing. _Oh, so he was awake_ , Martin thought, and immediately felt all the nerves creep back into his body.

He didn’t say anything for a while, which didn’t help Martin’s case of nerves and anxiety overly much. But then Jon draped an arm around him and turned Martin back into his side, before pulling him into his chest, and that assuaged the oncoming storm. It was nice.

Martin hugged him back, as well as he could, and closed his eyes and pressed his face into the crook of Jon’s neck. He sighed, feeling the tension ease a bit more. This _was_ nice. They hadn’t really done this before either.

“Alright,” Jon said.

“Hm?”

His hold on Martin tightened. “Alright, that sounds good. We can try, at some point.”

“Oh.” Martin’s lungs fizzled like spilled soda. 

_It might feel nice_ , he finally allowed himself to think. The novelty of it was intoxicating. 

There was still no lust there, no need, but the thought of trying something new with Jon was as heady as ever. Nerves, nerves, nerves. Cooking together, playing twenty questions without acknowledging it, planting flowers, maybe someday having Jon slip his hand into his trousers. It was all the same.

“Okay. But we don’t have to, like I said—”

“ _Yes_ , Martin, I think we’ve established already that neither of us would offer to do things they don’t feel like doing.”

“Do you think if you say my name more often I’m more likely to agree with you?” Martin grinned into his neck.

“I don’t know, are you?”

“Maybe a little bit.”

Jon leaned back then, just enough to be able to look Martin in the eye again.

“Let’s hear it, then,” he said, smirk barely concealed. “ _Martin_.”

“You can have sex with me whenever the fancy strikes both of us,” Martin said instantly, barely keeping his breathing even.

Jon held out a hand between them, face serious and maybe a little smug.. Martin looked at it for a moment before tentatively taking it. Jon immediately shook his hand.

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

This time, when his breathing turned wobbly, Martin gave in and collapsed back on the pillow in a fit of laughter. Jon followed him suit, but not before pressing half a dozen breathy kisses to Martin’s face.


End file.
